On Halloween, students gathered in the gym to show off their costumes by walking in a circle to the “Monster Mash” and “C’est l’Halloween” in the hopes of winning a prize. The teachers loved my punny costume, and I won first place. My reward was a bag of delicious treats and toys. I basked in glory as I walked back to my seat, but as I sat down, a bunch of my classmates jumped me, ripping my beautifully decorated bag wide open like hungry wildebeests, taking everything except for a small plastic pumpkin toy.
“You didn’t deserve to win anyway, your costume wasn’t that good,” one of my snotty classmates said as he broke off a piece of my Kit Kat bar and chomped on it.
For the next decade, Halloween was tainted by this memory, and I spent my teens trying to find the perfect costume that would boost my confidence, wow my peers, and gain me entry into the world of cool-kid Halloween parties. I wanted the whole nine yards of sexy—latex, short skirts, high heels, too much makeup. I didn’t want to be at a party with Regina George. I wanted to be Regina George.
I planned my costumes—a tight uniform of some kind; a sexy ’80s housewife in leggings and a headband; a cute go-go dancer—but when it came time, I didn’t have the confidence to pull them off. I just wasn’t one of the hot girls.
But, during my first year at Western, I finally started to see myself differently. I followed eyes that scanned my body when I walked by, and my dormmates complimented the dresses I wore on the weekends. You look soooo good. You look hot. Here, I could be someone different. It didn’t take looks to pull off a costume, it took confidence, and at a school infamous for partying, Halloween was the perfect opportunity to try again. In first year I was a hula girl, equipped with a grass skirt made of strands of green plastic, and a red tank top that I folded up to show my midriff. I felt so confident that, when second year started, Taz and I were both finally ready to conquer the “sexy” costumes.
In preparation for Halloween day, we hit the mall and found ourselves the sexiest costumes to blow our budget on. I bought a $75 Wonder Woman outfit and Taz chose Snow White (both unlicensed, because those are always more risqué).
When October 31st arrived, I stuffed my breasts into the tight cups of the red and gold corset and zipped up my red, shiny, six-inch-heeled, thigh-high boots. I put on my wristbands, attached my golden lasso, secured my cape, and slid my headband over my silky, straightened hair. I looked in the mirror; I had made it.
We both looked the part: me every inch a superhero, and Taz—with her perfectly heart-shaped face, rosy cheeks, and shiny, tousled jet-black hair—definitely a Disney princess. Now, as bomb-ass Wonder Woman and sexy Snow White, we felt confident and ready to present ourselves at the first of many epic Halloween parties. Broke from buying our expensive costumes, we walked to Jack’s to meet Malcolm.
“Hey, Black Wonder Woman!” a white guy yelled from across the street. He was Woody from Toy Story.
“No, just Wonder Woman!” I yelled back, smiling through my teeth.
Taz thought it was hilarious. That was, until a green Power Ranger and his friends stopped us a block before the bar. The Power Ranger pointed at us. “Hey! Black Wonder Woman and Brown Snow White!”
“BITCH, IT’S JUST SNOW WHITE!” She was red in the face and wild-eyed in her poufy costume, ready to throw hands and start a princess-versus-superhero brawl.
The stunned Power Ranger was no match for the mother of dwarfs. He and his posse quickly moved along.
The taunts continued: Black Wonder Woman? Look at Brown Snow White! Wrong colour, ladies. I felt less like Regina George and more like a public spectacle. Taz and I eventually stopped responding, put our heads down, and walked as fast as we could.
People stood shoulder to shoulder at the bar, barely able to move. Plastic skeletons, cobwebs, and red string lights hung from the ceiling. On the dance floor, cute angels, sexy black cats, and a dozen other (white) Wonder Women danced with zombies, uniformed men, and Frankensteins. All around, white people were dressed in Indigenous-themed costumes, as Nicki Minaj (with a giant, fake ass included), and as Arab jihadists.
Behind the dance floor, Malcolm was waving with one hand and downing his Jägerbomb with the other. He was wearing a yellow onesie, abstract enough to have a stake in the festivities. We pushed through the sweaty bodies to get to him. He had already ordered us shots.
“Tonight is going to be epic,” he said, clinking his glass with ours. I hoped to forget the walk over as we downed our shots, ready to finally experience the Halloween we had waited so patiently for. But as I set my glass down, I saw those three faces at the door—those glowing eyes already on me—moving past everyone and towards us, their target. There was nothing I could do.
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In 2013, actress Julianne Hough wore blackface as part of her Halloween costume as Crazy Eyes from Orange Is the New Black. Actor Colton Haynes has dressed up in blackface on three different occasions. Comedians Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy Kimmel have all worn blackface on TV, and drag queens like Daytona Bitch and Charlie Hides have performed in blackface. Mindy Kaling’s brother even wrote a book about it: he changed his appearance to look like a Black man in order to have a better shot at getting into medical school. Virginia governor Ralph Northam, Attorney General Mark Herring, and even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have all been busted by yearbook or party photos showing them in blackface.
Blackface is also embedded in fashion. Magazines like Vogue Netherlands, Vogue Paris, and Numéro have run photographs of white models painted in blackface. In the past two years, Prada had to pull a line of black monkey figurines with big, pronounced red lips that resembled the racist imagery of the Sambo stereotype, and Gucci removed a black turtleneck sweater from sale—it pulled up over the bottom of the face and featured an oversized red lip around the cut-out mouth.
Today’s culture has evolved to include digital minstrel shows. Digital blackface—sharing a GIF or meme featuring a Black person (especially making exaggerated gestures or reactions) by someone who isn’t Black, is a part of daily online and text communication. We’ve all seen non-Black people post side-eyeing Prince, eye-rolling Rihanna and James Harden, or an endless stream of Black reality stars, celebrities, and everyday Black people who end up as memes. Our expressions of emotion, too often perceived in real life as over-the-top and obnoxious, are reduced to looping videos as an emotional stand-in or for the comedic relief of others.
And that’s what blackface is: the performance of Black stereotypes that reproduce negative portrayals of a marginalized group all for the sake of amusement. It doesn’t have to be on a stage: modern-day minstrelsy includes non-Black people wearing urban wear and dreads, speaking in African American Vernacular English, appropriating clothing and hairstyles, and wearing foundation several shades darker or darkening skin tone on photos. (The Kardashian-Jenner clan is notorious for this, as well as appropriating Black women’s hairstyles and ripping off ideas from Black designers for their own clothing lines).
While blackface has had a history in Canada since the mid-1800s, it has re-emerged on campuses in the last ten to fifteen years. Nearly every frosh week and Halloween, universities make national news when students throw parties involving cultural appropriation and racist face-painting. In 2009, white students at the University of Toronto won a prize at a Halloween party for painting their faces brown and dressing up as the Jamaican bobsled team from Cool Runnings. In 2011, the Université de Montréal received backlash after people painted their faces in black paint during frosh week and dressed up as Jamaican sprinters, wearing the colours of the flag and speaking in mock Jamaican accents. In 2014, students at Brock University won $500 at a costume contest for also dressing up as the Jamaican bobsled team, black paint and all; and in November 2016, students at Queen’s University held a racist costume party that encouraged students to dress up as foreign cultures. Students, mostly white, showed up as Rast
afarians, Viet Cong guerillas, and Buddhist monks.
The motivating factor to dress in blackface can seem puzzling, but it’s quite simple. For white people, blackface is a way to transform themselves temporarily, allowing them to indulge in and perform the Black mannerisms that they’re itching to adopt—ones they try to get away with every day, like talking and walking “Black” or wearing cornrows.
For students, universities are spaces where young white people can act on both their greatest desires for Blackness and their most anti-Black fantasies. It’s where performing stereotypes of Blackness becomes a social stepping stone—an easy way to break the ice, to make new friends, to win a prize, to get laid—at the expense of the targeted group. There is no concern for the impact on us, because we are seen as caricatures, bodies available to appropriate and mock. After the fact—if there’s punishment at all—these acts are reduced to a debate over intent versus offence by school officials, or by the faux-intellectualizing of the right and others who don’t see a problem. These excuses make room for white students to feel comfortable putting on black paint without consequences.
As an institution, university enables these behaviours by virtue of its mandate. The cushion between the real world and childhood, it serves as a place that encourages mistakes and risks—to dream big, to try and fail, to push the boundaries. And so it becomes a place to live out these desires and aggressions towards people of colour; to test the waters of white supremacy and the exploitation of free speech and expression—all without the same kinds of consequences that are experienced in the real world.
There’s enough space to get away with these behaviours: these parties are often held off-campus, taking the responsibility off the schools. White students in particular just get a slap on the wrist—their behaviour is justified as youthful ignorance with a lack of malicious intent, in order to avoid risking their futures. Meanwhile, Black boys get suspended and expelled at disproportionate rates in elementary school and high school, meaning some of them don’t even get the chance to go to university.
At the end of the night, those three students from Jack’s went home, scrubbed the black paint off their faces, and went to bed. But who I am can never be washed away with soap.
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That Halloween night at Jack’s, Malcolm and Taz went to the dance floor, but I stayed by the bar, taking more shots to knock the bitter taste of old-school minstrel racism out of my mouth. “Great costume, girl,” the man beside me said, a Chris Elliott lookalike in his forties dressed in the same Wonder Woman costume and Walmart boots. I laughed for the first time that night as he joked about his corset not fitting. Then he moved closer, his eyes shifting into a glassy, predatory gaze.
“You look really sexy in that costume,” he said.
These were the words I had been waiting years to hear, but now I wished for nothing more than to be wearing a paper bag. His beer spilled all over my corset as he tried to kiss me. “Black Wonder Woman is the best!” he yelled from behind me as I left, wiping my face.
On the way back home from Jack’s, Taz and I had no energy to respond to the comments about Black Wonder Woman and Brown Snow White. My costume might have won me a pass into the popular Halloween crowd, but fitting in was out of the question.
The reality that the city I had chosen for university was plagued by anti-Black racism would soon seep into every part of my academic and personal life. I would come to accept subtle and blatant racism as part of my existence. I would teach myself that survival meant looking over my shoulder when walking home at night, and maintaining my sanity often required drowning myself in alcohol and food. I would become both hardened and softened by racial hatred before I even knew how to love myself—before I even knew who I was. It wouldn’t take long for me to realize that the best four years of my life would also be some of the worst, and that the fun, breezy university experience I had seen in movies featuring beautiful blond actors was not made for someone like me.
Though I was supposed to be a superhero that night, I didn’t have the power to lift the weight of this new world that was crushing me.
That was the last year I went out for Halloween.
The Necessary Survival Guide for Token Students
The Token in Class
WHAT TO EXPECT: You may experience the “classroom cooties”—an unexplainable, incurable phenomenon where the lecture hall could be completely full except for the seat beside you, and someone will still choose to sit on the stairs. Group projects will be your undoing: they heard Black students aren’t high achievers, so they’ll give you the easiest part of the project, like formatting the front page.
You may feel extremely uncomfortable with class conversations about racism or slavery. You may be asked, in front of everyone, if it’s okay for the class to discuss these topics, as if you alone are responsible for the entire race of Black people. Students may not want to engage at all because they’re scared that they’ll hurt your feelings—or worse, that you’ll call them a racist. They may say things like “Isn’t talking about this divisive?” and “We’re all human” and “I don’t see colour.” There will be one self-proclaimed “woke” white person who will try to bond with you by talking at length about all the ways Black people continue to be oppressed, when all you want to talk about are the ways you want Michael B. Jordan to oppress you.
HOW TO DEAL WITH IT: Acknowledge that, no matter how hard you scrub, you’ll always have the token cooties in the classroom. So, kill them with your knowledge. Smile, but let that militant spirit twinkle in your eye. Trip them up by sitting in front of the class (they think you like the back row). Wear glasses; they won’t expect that.
In group projects, there will come a time when your partners realize that you’re a smart Black person and will start slacking. Throw them all under the bus by telling the prof about their unbecoming work ethic—the days of free labour are over. When the teacher singles you out and asks how we can all combat racism, tilt your head down and towards your left hand, point your index finger towards your temple, look her dead in her eye, and say, “By any means necessary.”
token
Aside from Malcolm, I had only seen four Black people by the end of my first month at Western.
It was not a good start. I wanted to prove to everyone back home that the school I chose wasn’t going to change me. They said I’d drown in a sea of white people, emerging an Oreo—a white girl in a Black girl’s body—playing beer pong, wearing oversized sweaters and TNA leggings, and dancing like I had no rhythm. They hypothesized that I’d probably start listening to LMFAO (which I did) and join a sorority (which I did not).
I didn’t want to prove people right, but it was starting to seem like I was becoming Black Becky. I had just about lost hope of finding people who looked like me when, on my way to class in November, I saw a Black girl on campus coming from the other side of the bridge I was about to cross. The bridge overlooks the Thames River, and she was headed south, away from campus and towards my residence, which meant she was probably a first-year too. But that was beside the point. She was here, and she was going to be my new best friend.
She was walking with her head up—good, the school hadn’t broken her. Just a happy Black girl on her way back from class.
Our eyes met as we both stepped onto the bridge. She acknowledged me, so now I knew there was no way she could miss me. I slowed down.
We were mere footsteps away from each other now. In preparation, I raised my head a little higher and straightened my shoulders. I thought about all the things I would say to her. Maybe a smile or a hello, maybe take her aside and say, “Girl, I am so glad to see you,” to which she’d reply, “Oh gosh, girl, me too. You have no idea,” and we’d laugh and chat on the bridge about how the struggle is real and become lifelong friends. I imagined us sitting on the grass hill in front of the University College building in between classes
, talking and laughing loudly on a shared blanket, ignoring all the scared and confused white people around us, just two Black girls in their Western bubble.
As we approached each other, our elbows nearly touching, I looked up, smiled right at her and waited for her eyes to meet mine.
Instead, she dropped her head and walked right past me, scurrying away, leaving me grinning into the ether like a psychopath.
I tried to piece the situation together in my head. She obviously saw me, but she’d also ignored me. As much as I wanted her to know I was here, in solidarity, I desperately needed some validation of my own that things would work out for us here.
A few weeks later, I saw another Black person on campus. I made eye contact and it happened again: eyes and head down, no acknowledgement. And then again. And again. It was as if they didn’t want to be seen at all.
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My choice to move hours away to go to Western was as shocking to my family as it was to me. I had no idea what university or college was even for, or why anyone would want to be in the school system longer than necessary. In Grade 11, when a provincial university representative came to our class to talk about our options for post-grad life, I shrunk into my seat as the kids around me conversed about majors and minors and campuses, things they knew about from their siblings or parents who had already gone.
No one close to me had braved the Canadian post-secondary system. My mother hated school and had gone into the workforce right after graduating. My father, a high school dropout, can barely read or write. My grandma was faced with the choices that many girls in Karachi at the time were given: support your family after grade school or get a degree. She chose to help her father. My grandfather got his degree at a college in Karachi and, though he would have liked to study more, he had to financially support his family, and then me.
They Said This Would Be Fun Page 3
